Tasmania on a Dominator (AKA a noobs cheapo adventure)

[FLICKIT]

Originally Posted by madart

so it was me, then..
I own NX650 and know it's great bike for rides like that one
Love the videos
What's your rear tire?

There will be a few more videos I came home with 3 hours of footage

I have Dunlop D606 front and rear, the rear is 130/90x17, front 90/90x21... I'll talk about these a bit more tomorrow...

[humphrey]

Sounds like a great trip!

I'm also a Tasmanian Dominator rider. Bought it about a year ago off gumtree, and it'd done about 73,000. Unlike you, I've only recently started riding (I'm 6 months into my P's) so I got the dominator because it was LAMS approved and by far the best dual-sport bike I could find in my budget in Tassie.

I like your panniers! I've been wanting something similar. I did a 2 day ride while I was still on my L's up through the Lakes, and past Toomes Lake, Oatlands, etc. Was a great ride. I managed to fit everything into a duffle bag that was strapped to the rear rack and a backpack. Oh, and a mate made me a wider replacement rack, so I could fit more on it. Also, a friend helped me make (ok, I helped him make) a custom screen out of polycarbonate. It makes the ride so much smoother, quieter, and relaxing! I've also added some handlebar risers, which make standing up on the gravel much easier (as I'm not a short person).

Once the bike was loaded, I also noticed quite a big difference in the ride. Although, I was still really new to riding, so I was still finding my feet on the gravel! Although, it still felt pretty stable when I rode standing up on the pegs. It'd be great to get the weight down lower so I'm still need to get some panniers happening.

Can you talk me though the couple of devices you have attached to your handlebars. One is your iphone -- how did you attach it? What is the other? I've been wanting to attach my HTC Desire (similarly spec to iphone3) to the bars so I can use it as a GPS. Also, I'd like to wire in a power socket, so I can run it plugged in.

[Trotski]

Love the case setup

I use a Pentax K10D DSLR, it lives in the top case, it's quite time consuming to stop and get the camera out and such, I didn't want to stop fo 5 mins just to snap a couple of pics a lot of the time... I need to get a point and shoot camera to keep in my pocket I think...

I use a Pentax DSLR too, I keep mine in a tank bag in front of me, and because my helmet has a flip front I can just pull up and take a few shots without even getting off the bike, i too have to much fun riding and sometimes find it hard to stop and take photos.

[theMISSIONARY]

Originally Posted by humphrey

Sounds like a great trip!

I'm also a Tasmanian Dominator rider. Bought it about a year ago off gumtree, and it'd done about 73,000. Unlike you, I've only recently started riding (I'm 6 months into my P's) so I got the dominator because it was LAMS approved and by far the best dual-sport bike I could find in my budget in Tassie.

I like your panniers! I've been wanting something similar. I did a 2 day ride while I was still on my L's up through the Lakes, and past Toomes Lake, Oatlands, etc. Was a great ride. I managed to fit everything into a duffle bag that was strapped to the rear rack and a backpack. Oh, and a mate made me a wider replacement rack, so I could fit more on it. Also, a friend helped me make (ok, I helped him make) a custom screen out of polycarbonate. It makes the ride so much smoother, quieter, and relaxing! I've also added some handlebar risers, which make standing up on the gravel much easier (as I'm not a short person).

Once the bike was loaded, I also noticed quite a big difference in the ride. Although, I was still really new to riding, so I was still finding my feet on the gravel! Although, it still felt pretty stable when I rode standing up on the pegs. It'd be great to get the weight down lower so I'm still need to get some panniers happening.

Can you talk me though the couple of devices you have attached to your handlebars. One is your iphone -- how did you attach it? What is the other? I've been wanting to attach my HTC Desire (similarly spec to iphone3) to the bars so I can use it as a GPS. Also, I'd like to wire in a power socket, so I can run it plugged in.

that KLR rider........is he a OH&S officer? by any chance

[MARTYJK]

Great stuff !! Love the photo's and looking forward to the next RR installment !!

[FLICKIT]

Originally Posted by humphrey

Sounds like a great trip!
I'm also a Tasmanian Dominator rider.

Good looking bike you have there, nice to know I'm not the only person in the state with good tastes, lol... (JK)

Also, a friend helped me make (ok, I helped him make) a custom screen out of polycarbonate. It makes the ride so much smoother, quieter, and relaxing! I've also added some handlebar risers, which make standing up on the gravel much easier (as I'm not a short person).

I have plans of making a screen also, it just hasn't happened yet... Your upright screen looks good... A lot are very swept back following the angle of the existing small screen, my concern with them is how much damage I'd do to my face if I slammed my face forward into the top edge of the screen, they could cause a nasty injury ...

I've been considered raising the bars with risers or higher bars because I'm over 6' also, but it seems I'll need a longer front brake line and such, I'll probably raise them eventually... how much did you lift your bars? ... did you have to get a longer brake hose?

Can you talk me though the couple of devices you have attached to your handlebars.

I was going to write about my phone set up anyway, so I might as well chuck it in here:

Some pics of my rough setup








The iPhone 3GS is in a ebay Otterbox on the left, I think the otterbox is probably a knock-off due to the price, but it's ok... not waterproof or dust proof, but it gives adaquate protection... When it rains I just rubber band a zip-lock bag over it...

iPhone Bitmap App:
http://nixanz.com/ios/bitmap/

The maps I use are scanned 100k and 250k topographic Tasmaps, I downloaded them years ago, I have all the paper maps anyway so I don't feel bad about using the downloaded (not paid for) digital versions..

On the right at the start of the trip I was running an older Samsung Omnia i900 (Windows Mobile OS) with OziExplorer CE... I've used OziExplorer for years on the PC and a HP Ipaq 5500 for mapping my property and such.... I wanted to give Ozi a try for my tracking, then maybe retire the iphone to my pocket out of harms way, but Ozi is a bit clunky for all day use and it stops tracking if it loses the GPS signal briefly, I found the iPhone with Bitmap much better so the Samsung phone was removed after a couple of days... The samsung was just protected with a screen protector and electrical taped wrapped all around to seal it from dust...

At times in pics and vids you might see a white device in the right holder, that was a Tel$tra WIFI mobile broadband modem... My iPhone is locked to Vodafone with a Voda sim and there's just no reception around most the state... So I borrowed the Tel$tra modem so I could send check in SMS's and emails to let family know where I was and where I was going, check the weather, + send my track files a couple of times per day....

I HAVE to get a Spot connect!... and I HAVE to unlock my iPhone and get a Telstra sim in it...

Now, for the mounts and such, it's all just temporary until I work out what works and what I need.... I have 2 cig lighter sockets cable tied to the bars, the left one was just an old car one I wrapped up in a bit of poly pipe and electrical tape, it's wired to the switched side of the ignition switch down where the ignition plugs in under the tank, there's a fuse up near the cig socket, and the ground wire is just connected to a bolt on the triple clamps...

The second cig socket I installed the day before I left for this trip, I wanted an unswitched socket for using the 12v air compressor and for charging stuff when the ignition wasn't on.... It's one of these sockets, which is quite good for the money:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/st0411-...ket-12v-102481

It's wired down to the battery with a fuse at the battery end and one up near the socket also, it's powered all the time.

The iPhone holder on the left is one of these I got years ago for using the Ipaq in the car, it's not too bad for some cheap plastic:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/car-por...eld-mount-1160

I've just used the top phone holder part hobbled together on a laboratory clamp with an angled bracket, crap I had laying around..

The right phone holder is one of these:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/bicycle...7-5-14cm-44243

It's quite small and flimsy, I wouldn't put the iPhone in it... I couldn't mount it's bar mount in a good spot so I removed the top part and mounted it the same as the other holder... Bodged together...

I also have a bit of 1/2" poly pipe cable tied in there which holds a stylus, it makes it easy to use the iPhone without taking my gloves off
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/fashion...ipad-red-81284


I use one of these cig lighter dual USB Adapter/Chargers, good for $4:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/genuine...c-12-24v-72687

As you can see, I buy a lot of cheap Chinese crap from Dealextreme...

I'm thinking about clamping a alloy plate to the handle bar cross brace then mount the phone holders to that, and sink the cig lighter sockets through the plate.... I don't want to put time into a permanent solution till I know exactly what I want/need.

Hope that gives you some ideas...

:)

[FLICKIT]

Originally Posted by Trotski

Love the case setup

I use a Pentax DSLR too, I keep mine in a tank bag in front of me, and because my helmet has a flip front I can just pull up and take a few shots without even getting off the bike, i too have to much fun riding and sometimes find it hard to stop and take photos.

The case set up came together quite well considering what a rush job it was... I'm not sure if I'll use the side cases in the long term, I'll talk about that later in the report... If nothing else, I have to raise them a bit, they're too low...

I've been considering a tank bag but there's not much room on the Domintors tank and I don't want to make the bike any harder to get onto, it's already a bit of a pain dodging cases and such.... I'll see what happens down the track, I might give a tank bag a go :)

Thanks for all the comments everyone :)

[humphrey]

Originally Posted by theMISSIONARY

that KLR rider........is he a OH&S officer? by any chance

Ha ha, Nope! but he did also have custom made panniers

[humphrey]

I have plans of making a screen also, it just hasn't happened yet... Your upright screen looks good... A lot are very swept back following the angle of the existing small screen, my concern with them is how much damage I'd do to my face if I slammed my face forward into the top edge of the screen, they could cause a nasty injury ...

With my bar risers installed, the Dominator doesn't have much room for a screen. So it's tilted as far back as it can be without restricting handlebar movement. Yes, the screen is high, and occasionlly while riding up steep hills (standing) I've nudged into it. But it's only been very softly and not a problem. I can't imagine I'd smash my head into it unless I was coming off the bike. In that case, I think the screen would be the least of my problems! :-P

[humphrey]

I've been considered raising the bars with risers or higher bars because I'm over 6' also, but it seems I'll need a longer front brake line and such, I'll probably raise them eventually... how much did you lift your bars? ... did you have to get a longer brake hose?

I used these risers
http://www.motorradgarage.com.au/cat...roducts_id=886
They come in different diameters - can't remember what one I got.

Yes, I had to get a longer brake hose. I took my old one into a hose enginneering place in Launceston, and they made me one 10cm longer for $40. Every other place I tried was going to cost an arm and a leg and wasn't able to legally sell it as a brake hose due to testing regulations or something.

[humphrey]

The iPhone 3GS is in a ebay Otterbox on the left, I think the otterbox is probably a knock-off due to the price, but it's ok... not waterproof or dust proof, but it gives adaquate protection... When it rains I just rubber band a zip-lock bag over it...

Ziplock bags are totally the best thing ever! I love how the touch screen still works.

iPhone Bitmap App:
http://nixanz.com/ios/bitmap/

The maps I use are scanned 100k and 250k topographic Tasmaps, I downloaded them years ago, I have all the paper maps anyway so I don't feel bad about using the downloaded (not paid for) digital versions..

Using Tasmaps is a good idea! I generally just use Google Maps, but it's missing a lot of tracks and roads. The Android version lets you cache areas for use offline, so it still works most of the time. I'll have to see if there is a similar app for Android.

[humphrey]

Now, for the mounts and such, it's all just temporary until I work out what works and what I need.... I have 2 cig lighter sockets cable tied to the bars, the left one was just an old car one I wrapped up in a bit of poly pipe and electrical tape, it's wired to the switched side of the ignition switch down where the ignition plugs in under the tank, there's a fuse up near the cig socket, and the ground wire is just connected to a bolt on the triple clamps...

Yep, I'm totally inspired to geek-up my bike now. Cigarette sockets here I come!

Thanks heaps for the ideas

And sorry for all the small posts... the forum wouldn't let me do them all at once :-s


Humphrey

[SuzukiScottie]

Great report so far!

[FLICKIT]

Riding:7:50am - 6:22pm

GPS-253km
Odometer-264km

Camp 2: in the forests 20km north of St Helens

Route: Long Marsh dam/weir - up the M-road - Lost falls - Hardings Falls - Bicheno - St marys - St Helens via Scammander and Skyline forests


(is it ok doing the routes like this? do they show up ok for everyone?)

I had a reasonable nights sleep and crawled out of the tent around 6am, it took me a couple of hours to have coffee and pack up (most days were much the same, 2 hours to get on the road), breakfast was coffee and a couple of muesli bars, I wasted a bit of time drying out the tent fly and ground sheet...

I emptied the 5L can of fuel into the bike to try and lighten the rear end... I warmed the bike up to check the oil, it was down a little, I packed 1L of oil but didn't pack a funnel, I ended up spilling a good amount of oil down across the engine trying to get the oil in the filler hole, lol... I ended up folding a bit of newspaper into a V-shaped ramp to pour the oil down and into the filler, that worked quite well and I used that method for the rest of the trip... All up I ended up using the whole liter of oil for the trip...

I was still considering heading home to unload some gear, I HAD to get the bike handling better!, but I thought I'd continue on for now and make the decision a little later...

I found out about Long marsh Dam from this post, and used that map to locate it: (Thanks Don)

Originally Posted by DonQx

Am looking forward to my first ride on a looong time :-)

Been looking at maps ... luvly thing to do ... plenty of possible diversions for the weekend.

Looked up the Long Dam Marsh info in

(@ http://www.roving.com.au/)

Highly recommended book, lots of good trip ideas.

Anyway, Long Marsh Dam ... mid-1800s convict type stuff ... quite a bit of it still to be seen ..

Anyway, I got away at 7:50am and made my way around the corner to Long Marsh Dam, it was only about 5km away and I found it with no problems... I believe Long Marsh Dam is an old convict built irrigation dam on the Macquarie River, it was started in the 1800's and never finished... It's just north of Tooms lake and the remains of the dam wall site is about a 5 min walk from the track... I didn't spend too much time exploring the area, and didn't go up to the convict ruins, there was a few slabs of rock around the place and such, nothing too exciting, I was keen to get on the road, I'll return here for a good look around another time:









I then went down to the weir down-river from the dam site:


This duck was right in weir out-fall feeding I think, he took off as I walked over, we both got a shock:










Now it was time to head back to the M-road and start heading north again, I planned to travel around 60km up the M-road upto Hardings falls...

This video starts at the weir with a climb up a rocky hill, along a flat stretch of track with numerous water holes, then around to the M-road with a couple of mins of M-road footage at the end to show how great our logging haul roads are... It's quite long, 9 mins, I hacked a lot out of it, but didn't want to cut it down too much, I wanted show what the track was like into Long Marsh, and show off Tassies awesome forestry roads: (I'll try and edit up a highlight video with music at the end of my report)...

At about 6:03 there's an ok sized tiger snake at the right side of the track, I pulled over too take pics but he vanished... I saw 7 or 8 snakes around this area the night before and this morning...

(All my videos are from a GoPro Hero HD, recording at 720p 25fps)

EDIT: Here's the same video as above at 3x speed, 3 mins long, for those that bore easy and don't want to watch the 9min version:


I followed the M-road north and stopped in at Lost falls on the way, it's only a 5 min walk up to the coastal lookout, an another 5 mins down to the falls, so I walked into both:

I found out about the falls and a lot of other spots from this Forestry site, they have a few maps and details about forest attractions around the state:
http://www.forestrytas.com.au/visiting/visitor-sites

The lookout was up on a large flat rock area:








Around Lost Falls:














I've thrown in lots of pics here because I didn't get the camera out again today, I'll have to finish this post with a bit of long winded commentary :P

I continued my journey up the M-road to the Hardings Falls carpark/camp area where I stopped for some lunch... Lunch was rice crackers and a small can of Smokey flavoured tuna...

The bike was handling a bit better now, I assumed it was because I removed the 5kg of fuel that was in the right case... so while I was stopped I removed my tent from the top bag and strapped it to the top of the right case to lower a little more weight... I also repositioned a few things in the cases to get most at much weight forward as I could...

At Hardings falls there's sign posted saying something like "18km to the east coast road, 4x4 only", I saw this when I was up here on a day trip recently and wanted to check it out... It turned out to be a good condition mainly gravel road that brought me out at Cherry Hill between Cranbrook and the Coles Bay turn off on the east coast road... It didn't take long to get down there and there was a few other tracks around that area on the map so I headed back up towards Hardings Falls to check them out....

The bike was handling much better now and I had great fun riding around the dirt bush tracks... On one of the tracks, "Apsley South", I came up behind 2 kids on old MX bikes pottering along at about 40kmh, they got quite a shock when I honked my horn and hooned past on the Dominator... I felt tough, lol...

The tracks lead me back out onto the east coast road about 5km south of Bicheno where I headed for some fuel, there was so many tourists about I just grabbed the fuel and headed north trying to find another track back into the forests...

About 5km south of the Elephant pass turn off at Chain of Lagoons there's a road that seems to lead back through to the top of the M-road, I was going to head in there and go through to Fingal... but not far down the road there's a bridge out and the track goes down a steep bank, through the muddy creek bed, and up the steep bank on the other side... I wasn't too worried about the climb in and out, but I was worried about getting this big lump of a bike stuck in the mud, so I turned around and headed up Elephant pass to St Marys where I topped my tank up again and headed up into the forests to find the South Sister lookout...

It was a fair climb up South Sisters to the parking area below the rocky peaks, I was feeling lazy so I didn't take any pics or do the hike upto the lookout, I just turned around and headed for upper Scamander through the forests... 20 years ago I use to camp at Trout River camp ground a fair bit so I headed in there for a quick look, it was very crowded with campers, bikes, boats, caravans, I just turned around and headed for St Helens through the forest following along the ridge tops.

I have a video of this ride but it's 16 mins long so I better edit it first, I'll post it later today or tomorrow...

Topped up the fuel in St Helens and headed north out of town towards Ansons bay... The white gravel road was very slippery and there was a ton of traffic about, I had done enough for the day so I turned off and found a spot to camp... It wasn't a great spot, but it was far enough from the road to not be disturbed:





Set up camp, had some food, a cheap SunRice microwave meal heated on the metho cooker and wrapped in tortillas... The sunrice meals have a satchel of rice and a satchel of juicy meaty crap, they can be heated by putting the satchels in boiling water... They're quite small and not real good, but they're cheap and easy, they were on special for $2:50, much better than $10+ for dehydrated meals...
http://www.sunrice.com.au/our-produc...eef-black-bean

I was feeling quite exhausted so I got in the tent at about 7:30pm, I didn't intend to, but I nodded off fairly quickly...

:)

[alexmacca30]

Great RR and vids, looking forward to the rest.